Security and Conflict / Policy Brief
No time to wind-down in Bosnia
09/09/2009 By Sofia Sebastián
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| AFP/Getty Images |
In May 2009, a crisis emerged in Bosnia when nationalist leader Milorad Dodik passed a resolution in the Republika Srpska parliament designed to undermine some of the key accomplishments of the state building process in place since the end of the war in 1995.
Although the crisis was eventually averted, it demonstrated again the highly volatile nature of Bosnian politics and the challenges faced by an international community that has grown impatient, frustrated and increasingly unsure how to resolve the Bosnian quagmire. The country continues to show no clear signs of reconciliation and there is a lack of commitment to the process of EU accession.
Most key reforms to date have either been directly imposed by the High Representative (HR), or have been accepted only after intensive pressure from the international community. Different political actors still hold mutually incompatible ideas about what the state should look like, and have not hesitated to raise the level of nationalist rhetoric in order to shore up support within their own ethnic groups. In June 2009 the EU expressed concern at ‘the unconstructive political atmosphere’.
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Keywords
Bosnia and Herzegovina Civil society EURelated publications
- Bosnia and Herzegovina's integration challenge
- Bosnia and Herzegovina: the international mission at a turning point
- Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Leaving Dayton behind: constitutional reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bio author: Sofia Sebastián
Sofia Sebastian is a researcher at FRIDE. Her research focuses mainly on the Balkans, especially Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, state-building processes, conflict and divided societies.
